


The Stairs

by Meiloorun



Category: Homestuck
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-17
Updated: 2014-11-17
Packaged: 2018-02-25 17:56:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2630894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meiloorun/pseuds/Meiloorun
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This room, this situation, this feeling is the same in every dimension, but your goldfish memory turns it into a surprise every time. Endgame AU. Needlessly angsty Stridercest and obtuse headcanons. Because Billy Mays and Star Wars.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Stairs

It's half past six at the beginning of the eighth day of the week. You insist on an eight day week, since seven was a horribly unlucky number in your old dimension, and John felt inclined to defend the number’s earnest symmetry. Dirk didn't take offense to your absurdity the way that  Karkat did. He typically didn't bother arguing with you unless it proved absolutely necessary-- a reformed passive aggressor now that the true fighting was done. Anyway, he had never needed to use a calendar before, and preferred to divine the passing of time by watching the wandering stars of a new universe.

Over time, you learn that left in the greasy cargo hold of the oil rig in which Dirk spent his entire waking life, among the vast platitudes of Alpha Dave’s SB & HJ merchandise, was an ample collection of moldy books containing seafaring tales. As those droll waters were his only landscape for so long, it's easy for you to understand why those sailors and ship captains entertained your bro with age-old histories of the ocean that had eventually risen to the whims of the Condesce. Though the oceans and maps weren't the same, the technology described --if you could deign to describe wooden boats as technology-- was long expired, and the grammatical honorifics dated beyond his comprehension. Practically unreadable.

But Dirk was the only person in four centuries to make it all the way through a book that pitted men against hubris against scurvy against one’s attention span. He came to understand that the compulsive need to conquer nature and space was a universal truth in life, literature, and even computer games. Not that you could be bothered to crack open a book these days-- you owe that to your better half, the one who died with a purpose. But Herman fucking Melville still managed to write thousands of pages about tying knots and making sashimi out of white whales that survived the test of time in every dimension. You just can't escape that brand of story, you guess. Alpha Dave must have had a more formalized sense of humor in his directing career; otherwise why leave around dogeared texts about the New England whaling industry? Herman Melville had no zero swag. 

You supposed that Dirk just liked the idea of boats, that someone could actually get somewhere in the midst of all that water, even though in all sixteen stagnant years afloat on that barge, he never raised a sail. Though once, he did show you the schematics for a gargantuan submarine he planned to build-- it kind of terrified you because it's ballistic specifications, but you managed a stark compliment or two. By now, your Bro has learned all about the whims of nature. He had played God in his own draft of the world-put-right and thus found that he was a land-lubber at heart. Somehow he managed to run across a copy of that salty, motherfucking  _Moby Dick_  in some dawn-of-the-new-age library and had spent the past weeks thumbing through it while perched next to you on the couch.

Overall, the formula of such seaworthy novels weighed the same after years of rereading-- the chase itself acting as the catalyst to some futile war, igniting the rage a mythical antagonist to lure a phantom shade of irony over the seed of their existences-- the end result being a universe that, against all odds, had only just begun to sprout. At the mercy of the game, you still had a little luck. Just enough for you to survive together.

The darkness from outside is diffused by the pale blues of the flashing TV screen, casting the entire room into aspect of a ghastly aquarium. The air conditioner churns out waves of cool air that dissipate into the humid room. You collapsed on the couch long ago, primed and ready for a snooze of heroic proportions, but your glasses are still perched on the brim of your sweating nose, and by now your body is ripe with sweat from the blankets and cushions-- same clothes as yesterday, accessorized with raccoon eyes from a sleepless night of watching bad television. By your feet, a new Squarewave emits his own gentle heat, humming with the weak bursts of sleeping disks and code-spun rhymes. Arriving fresh from a long, indulgent shower, Dirk hangs off the back of the couch, his elbows perched over the arching back, the snagging the remote with one hand and punching at the buttons. You can smell his clean skin, the minty, patchouli aroma of lye and toothpaste wafting over the stench of salty perspiration underneath your armpits.

This room, this situation, this feeling is the same in every dimension, but your goldfish memory turns it into a surprise every time. He stops surfing through the channels and leaves it on a bright, flashing infomercial. You curse and swipe at the remote, No way, are you wasting precious neurons on this waste of inhuman content.”

"Check it. There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is the true method. This is God's work."

"I can't believe you think that line will work on me-- it didn't work when you tried to explain refrigerated weaponry or smuppets, it won't work now. I got wise to my god complex, did you?"

Dirk shrugs in response, with his eyes glued to the blinking tv screen, spattered with bubbles of distorted LEDs. He wasn't so much of a master craftsman as a reluctantly expert engineer, but you don't notice it much. He's made do with whatever was laying around, and you'd be lying if you said that you expected a higher standard of living after all this time. Literally-- you’re thankful enough that you could still get your hands on fresh apple juice. And it's not like Dirk really understood the benefit of high definition televisions, when his nose was usually buried in old books, or bent over circuit boards with a soldering gun.

'First of all, there's absolutely nothing fucking messier than time travel. Don't even try ignoring those clusterfucks-- I've got the homicidal complex to defend ‘em. Secondly, programming code is one kind of acceptable mess. Television programming for household cleaning supplies? Not so much, Bro. Seriously, change the channel."

"No way. The Zorbeez is a hegemonic symbol of restoring balance. And we are it’s creator. Be proud."

"Fuuuuuuck you. Nothing can excuse this bullshit. I am not holding my self responsible for the existence of limited time offers.”

You remember the day this brass motherfucker on the screen, Billy Mays, died in your reality, and you couldn't spare a moment of bereavement on this wide-smiling asshole with the enthusiasm of a slime-stricken troll. That beard was manly as dick, you had to admit, but the constant chipperness about a slab of absorbent foam? You found it uncanny and wasteful of a perfectly expendable attention span. Especially when other quality programming like _Baywatch_ was on.

“There’s a reason why this stuff is on at night when there are no trolls to be offended by it and no humans to be sullied by it’s flashy trickery. Anyway, haven’t you heard of the Shamwow? That’s where the absorbency’s at.”

"I have no interest in what a Shamwow is. All my passion is reserved for Zorbeez and this Mays fellow.”

“He’s got a beard, a coke habit, and heart disease. Is that all it takes to sell you something?”

“Well, the Oxy Clean worked wonders on the floor tile. Not that you’d notice since you have failed yet again to do a lick of housework this week. But I’d buy anything from the Chuck Norris of early morning infomercial ads. Better than Skinemax, unless you’d rather..."

What the fuck. “Give me the remote," you practically sob. 

“No way. I'm enjoying this. Unironically, of course.”

"Of course you are," you chide, watching the infomercial’s special offer countdown tick away with bitter hope.

"It's actually kind of beautiful. Look how dry that bathroom floor is. We should get one.” He nods with affirmation, and a few stray drops of water trickle down your shoulder. You adjust your gaze out of the bright gap in the corner of your vision, where Dirk's hand is pale, gleaming and firmly attached to the remote control.

"We? We should stop referring to us as we. We don't like it. We don't consider it specific enough to our individual needs-- none of those being that we would potentially want or even slightly desire a Zorbeez.” Dirk makes no sign of acknowledgement, other than shifting the remote far away from your clobbering hands. “It should, however, be mandated that we share the remote. Given the shared genetic material? Some parental unit would be saying exactly that right now, if we had any to spare."

Dirk frowns, "Are we watching television or establishing a zero-sum mentality around the case of your immaturity?” You want to flip him off, but the sentiment doesn't carry enough weight when he’s got one hand shoving your head into the couch cushions and the other holding the remote far out of your reach. “I'm putting on  _The Deadliest Catch_  now."

"Jegus Christ. Please!” you bawl. “Can't you go do something else? The last thing I want to do is watch burly trolls chase down crabs. I witness enough of that nonsense when Karkat is around. If he comes over today and catches you watching that garbage we'll never get him to leave!"

"It’s hardly crap. But, now it's ‘we’ again?"

You smother an enraged groan in a cushion, contemplating the effectiveness of a staged protest in the bathroom. But that would mean you had to cross the wet tile with socks, and there was no TV in there. Anyway, Dirk would just as soon beat you to the chase so he could play with his hair or clip his nails or whatever he got up to in there for hours at a time.

Dirk has accused you of suffering from post-immortal-mortality depression, considering that you've taken a near permanent roost in front of the TV that Dirk repaired for your living room. It's why Karkat and John have arranged to come around, per his request, to jolt you out of your necrotic slump. The rest of your abode is as close as it could be to your original apartment, but you still can’t bring yourself to sleep alone in your bed. Over the past month, you've made yourself comfortable in a roost of feather-down blankets, cocooned from this new reality, unused to the normal discomfort of not having food and the chagrin of having too many swords stowed in the fridge. Dirk was predictably unreadable, but you get the impression that he has never been happier to stay awake with you to witness the full creation of this new Earth. Even if it meant falling asleep over the chassis of a flayed robot, or nodding off on your shoulder in the middle of a deadliest warrior marathon.

You have to wonder how and where survivor's instinct has left you and your brother, in the fresh skeleton of a new home with your last ally from your world's cast of wayward refugees. After eight days of alchemizing and world-building and logic-leaping, the new world was created, and celebration ensued with bonfires, and abundant liquid libations. Eventually, the time came for everyone to carve out their own path of reintegration, to pick up the loose seams of their lives and desires, to weave them back into the ebb and flow of chronological time and mortal lungs. You and Dirk stayed in the hastily erected boarding house, with it's open roof, appropriately weathered brick face, and staggering labyrinth of staircases. Soon you had neighbors, and those neighbors complained about the noise from Dirk's welding, or the bass from your music. Even entertainment and advertising regained it's familiar, stale flavor, easily hooking it's eager claw into your subconscious and dragging you along with the infamy of infomercials and reality tv.

Dirk is captivated by these developments, though his only tells are that he smiles at the rude notes left by sleepless neighbors, wanders the well-stocked grocery stores with aimless intent, and settles on the most ridiculous channels when you and he are marooned in a pile of blankets and incomplete thoughts.

"Get up."

Dirk tosses the remote across the couch, but as you lean over to grab it, he hooks his hands underneath your armpits and heaves you out of your chrysalis of blankets. For only physically being a year older than you, he's surprisingly strong. But then again, his pastimes of late have included hauling around sheet metal and groceries, whereas yours have been watching poker world tours and falling asleep with your headphones on at full volume. You flail at him in surprise and you can't help but let your hands skim over the toned muscles of his arms. You're kicking and spitting as he drops you on the carpet in a heap, your shades knocked askew. There's nothing but infantile rage coursing through you, and though the insults could burn a hole in your tongue, you say nothing, and scramble to your feet to quickly mask your embarrassment.

"Let's go to the roof."

"Why?" you snidely demand. Dirk has one hand planted on his hip, which in terms of his body language indicated nothing less than trickery. Your instinct is to instantly distrust his impassive facade, but the loyalty you feel towards Dirk gives him a foundation of control, the only kind that you can allow him. You breathe in, he breathes out. Dirk's hand curls into his pocket in a telltale signal of bashfulness, and you feel a stroke of undeserved pride.

"Because I haven't seen a sunrise in forever." He replies steadily. "Not since the rig."

“You’re serious?” He breathes in, defensive, and you breath out, straightening your glasses, ready to burrito yourself in the blankets again. But you can see, by the small increments of change in his body, by the tilt of his neck that, the narrowing of his brow, that Dirk still needed to be heard.

“Used to watch the old sun rise every morning.” You resist the urge to roll your eyes, despite knowing that he can’t see past your glasses. “I wouldn't mind catching the new one for once, instead of remaining blissfully ignorant of the passing time, as per your sage example, brother-of-mine.”

You roll with the jibe, admiring it’s rhythmical tonality before taking offense and heaving out a disgruntled sigh. Then Dirk hooks a finger around the temple of your aviators, dragging them down the arch of your nose and pins you with a healthy serving of mandarin orange irises peeking out over the slanted angle of his own shades. Strider eyes aren't easy to ignore, and you feel disarmed to your very core.

“This way,” he murmurs, regaling you with his molten gaze, “we’ll have an excuse as to why we're still up when our guests arrive for breakfast. We could even strife--” he says with a small smirk. "...but you’re not exactly in fighting form, lil’ man."

You can’t help but notice the familiar bags beneath his eyes, the lingering shadows of indulgent nights spent with you, the overextended projects of hodge podge electronics, the stripped wires and burnt thumbs. Dirk’s particular shade of optimism could hardly be called contagious, but his will, the altruistic standard to which he bound himself, was infectious. Even as a twelve year old cool kid, you weren't immune to your Bro’s clandestine charms. You don’t think you ever will be.

“Do serve your burns with side of A1?” you grumble, staggering over to the closet for your shoes. Dirk punches you in the shoulder as you pass him, grabs his hat and swings the front door open.

You live on the top floor, which the reason why so many of your neighbors have it out for you, but it does give you full access to the roof for such rare occasions as these. You've gone up there only a handful of times since you settled in, but Dirk manages to spend every morning up in the rafters-- you can’t help but think he’s lying about never seeing the sun rise.

“It’s true, Bro.” He says, bounding up the service steps with his hands in his pockets. You, meanwhile, are pulling yourself up by the iron banister, bemoaning your laziness. “It’s bad luck to watch one alone.”

“That’s nonsense. You must have done it thousands of times,” you pant. Dirk is suspiciously silent, so you add, “With Cal. Or Sharptooth or Jigsaw, or whatever. And the rest of your freaky android family.” You get the feeling that your assumptions rub salt into an old wound because he then takes the steps two at a time, leaving you in the dust and shadow when the roof door opens and slams in your face.

The deja vu reels you back into your head. You've followed Dirk up these steps in too many of you memories, each time with the expectation of sweat and bruises, following the retarded emotional exchange of two inverted narcissists who only had each other to rely on. But you were just a brat back then, with no comprehension of your brother beyond his inconsistent flash stepping and insatiable quirks.

You pause for a moment to control your wheezing-- you really should stop bumming cigarettes from the sassy neighbor ladies next door-- and carefully press the door open.

The sky is the color of bruised, mottled skin, and it puts an awful taste in your mouth. Dirk is standing on the western edge of the building, where the clouds play like dancing silhouettes against the purpling sky. Nightshade absconds to the east, where the dim lights of city traffic stick out like pinpricks of man-made stars.

Everything about this world is backwards from the former Earth, but not wrong in its conception. In fact, it is nothing but right, since you made it this way: the planet orbits the sun in a four hundred and thirteen days, and revolves clockwise in 32 hour stints. The moons-- there are two-- have dipped below the skyline. The smoke trails of passing aircrafts leave hatchet marks among the clouds. Some of the misty bodies mingle with the high-rises. The citizens are already in action, waking noises drifting up from the streets below. Some of their inhabitants have clans and kings, others have queens and sects, but all exist in peace while the planet continues its cycle. The only war that you know of is the insignificant one within yourself, eating away at you like rust.

As you join Dirk at the brightening edge of the building, you peek over the cement barrier. Between the boxy human complexes and the organic molds of hives, the local flora turn up their leaves out and away in search of the absent sun. The freshwater coral that grows up the high rises glimmers with morning dew. The streets of New Dallas are peppered with civilian life, scattering like ants into formation on the cement. Then the dizziness clouds your head and sends bees swarming in your stomach. You have clutch your stomach and look away.

“The height makes you nervous.” Dirk observes. You shift your weight from foot to foot, focusing solely on not throwing up ranch Doritos all over your shoes. The vestiges of too many dead Daves, splitting on the blacktop like rotten fruit, swarm your memory.

“You don’t have a vivid approximation of what your body looks like dropped from ten stories. I do.”

“I can only imagine. I've never been scared of heights. Or flying. Or dying," he says stoically, gazing out into the scenery of the city.

“Sounds like you need to learn some risk-management," you return bitterly. "That’s intended as a threat, by the way, to be exacted at a later time and date. But I guess now that we’re all human and vulnerable again I should restrain myself. Not that I really stand a chance mano a mano--”

“As if. Your body is hardly the sum of all your parts," Dirk quips confidently, borrowing another epigraph from the dialogues of his decrepit books. You replay his words in your head, puzzled, and fix a glare on him.

"Was that a compliment? I'm not used to spelunking your sarchasm in the wee hours of the morning," you balk, pausing to admire Dirk's strong profile against the sky. His damp hair is crushed under the orange ball cap, which clashes awfully with his pale skin in the milky light.

"It wasn't intended to cause offense," he says, folding his arms. "I'm not even remotely interested in fighting you right now, so--"

“Then maybe I should be insulted. Maybe I need to hire an ass-kicking archaeologist to handle these all these folksy digs you keep dishing out," you scoff. His steadfast gaze into the distance makes you feel ignored, and you feel yourself bristling for an argument that you're prepared to lose. You squash an urge to flick the brim of his hat and toss it over the edge in spite. "I'll get Indiana Jake to let me borrow his whip. Have ourselves a real last crusade."

You're slightly shocked when Dirk chuckles and drops a protective arm around your shoulder, dragging you closer to the edge.

“Nah, don’t bother. Can't afford the casualties from all that," Dirk snickers as his hand affectionately massages your shoulder. "No, I’m afraid I prefer my Dave alive, annoying, and breathing down my neck at every spare interval.”

“Your Dave? What about--”

“Shut up. You’re missing it.”

Your sun comes up over the horizon, rises over the crooked teeth of buildings and construction beams, casting broad shadows over the stretch of blossoming civilization throughout New Dallas. It's a round ball of willowisp green, fiery and golden at its edges, its center a flux of white light. The bruised sky swells with red, the tourniquet of night finally broken, orange and indigo bleeding into each other like paint down a sink drain. Awash in the neon warmth of the celestial body, you forget to breathe, and only remember to when Dirk's hand slides past your shoulder, around the bend of your elbow, and pulls you flush against his side. Your hands go numb as he flexes his grip on your arm, and your retinas burn when you stare too long into the levitating center of the sun. Blinking spots out of your vision, you twist your gaze away, and you catch the bright reflection of the green light in Dirk's glasses and the full illumination of an peaceful smile.

“Wow," you breathe out, gobsmacked by the fullness of his widespread lips and the shine of his teeth. The itch inside your chest begs to be scratched. You smother it with your free palm, rubbing beneath your collarbone like you have heartburn and not pangs of lust, and lean into your Bro's grip for support.

“Yeah, I wasn’t expecting that. Quite a show, yeah?” He looks down at you, and you quickly jerk your head towards the sunrise. "Kudos to us."

“I don’t think...I don’t know, Bro," you sigh unabashedly. "I can’t take responsibility for any of this. The world. I don’t want to. I wasn't really a hero anyway. All I'm guilty of is a series of fat-fingered, button-mashing accidents with the advantage of time-bending contra code.” Dirk relinquishes you from his one-armed embrace, and you shrink away from him. "I'm no one's hero. Not yours, anyway."

“You’re wrong. The fact that we’re standing here together is proof. You have made yourself a hero a thousand times over.”

“Not...me. I didn't have to sacrifice anything."

"You sacrificed your time," Dirk supplies with an affected gesture of his hands. "How long do you think we've been playing this game, Bro? There's been a hell of a lot of hours spent on making sure this world came together the way it is now, and you have no right trying to pretend it means nothing." Dirk's smile has transpired into a frown, and you mourn for it along with your misplaced pride.

"So what? None of it's important now. Not when I don’t have the power to--”

“Change? Change what?” Dirk shakes his head dismissively and looks out towards the horizon. You can't look at his dismayed expression, so you stare down the length of his neck, where his hair has begun to dry and curl against his skin. You don't know how to change your feelings, you think to yourself. You don't deserve to be witnessing the same antics, after years and years of the same foolish fantasies about wandering hands, lingering glances, and butchered confessions. What you want to change is the natural order between you brothers that has existed in pulled punches and scraped knees-- you want to evolve beyond yourself, but you can't seem to grasp that these not-so-fraternal feelings have supplied the foundation beneath your need for this new world since the apex of this journey. And now you finally have it, this brand spanking new world. This hormonal, weak body. Only to rise again with this new, green sun that sheds too much light on your unshakable sins.

What's worse is that Dirk is comfortable acting unfathomably thick-headed about the fact that you don't want your separate bed, let alone a part of the credit that has left the two of you in a dimension of your own creation, isolated from everyone but each other, intoxicated by the mere presence of the other without admitting it. Alone in your fishbowl, you can't help but wonder if you're really looking at him, or just another phantom reflection in the glass with an unseen expiration date. You know that nothing was conceivably real at many points along your journey, but now, everything is spread out like playing cards on a table. It terrifies you into submission, just the same as it always did, and your poker face hasn't withstood the test of time.

“I didn't realize your self-esteem would take such a blow when you got the god juice zapped out of ya. We’re gonna need to figure out a more permanent remedy for this.”

“We again?” you offer weakly, biting back a disturbed laugh. Dirk turns to you, arching an eyebrow.

“Why can’t it be we?”

He sidles up to you, confronting your bated breath with pursed lips. Faced with the whole of him in the sheen of fresh sunlight, you stagger backwards against the cement barrier and brace yourself against the edge with white knuckles.

“W-why not?" You stutter, unprepared for the hands that suddenly fix themselves on your shoulders and force to to sit down on the hard edge. The wind blows against your exposed back and you shudder with several brands of fear. "Because it’s backwards, and weird, and--”

“--the way things ought to be, from my approximation. The way the smuppet stuffs it, the cookie crumbles, what have you. It floats my boat. Toasts my bread. The pieces are puzzling, but they fit together. We fit together."

Dirk sinks to his knees, losing the intimidating factor of his imposed height. At eye level with you, you can see yourself, pale and slack-jawed, reflected clearly in the gleam of his shades. Why aren't you smiling? Isn't this what you've wanted to hear? Aren't you the same boy who with the same overripe feelings? This confession stretches beyond the constraint of your physical memory, it's a part of your bones and your blood and your breath. Your lips twitch uncertainly as Dirk continues. You want to taste his words on your tongue, but not yet. You've waited this long, what's a few seconds more of intrepid deprivation?

"It's messy, but...it needs to be that way for us to appreciate it. I've never needed anything to make sense just so I can experience it. That's our life, Strider. Take it like a man. Admit that you're more than a brother to me and just...get on with it."

You balk at the touch of his hands on your neck, calloused and careful. You can't move-- you won't let yourself, not when the thrill of Dirk's reason skims over your skin like a warm static pulse. The denial is delicious. For a moment, you feel like you've stopped time once again. This is you in your prime-- a master of misdirection. Dirk's hands fall away, his posture weary and nervous, and you swallow a back a desperate plea to keep your illusions in tact. But no longer, since Dirk is already rising and digging a hand underneath his cap. The beads of sweat on his brow fill you with a deep sense of success. You release a breath you didn't know you were holding, your lungs strung out like popped balloons by the effort.

You finally break out into a smile, biting one side of your cheek to distort the muscle's features.

"Are you done throwing me this shame-based pity party? Because you're turning my first real sunrise into a soap opera scene, like sans the shocking revelations and unwanted pregnancies. Very cliche," you spit out, vibrating with the tension of Dirk's spent nerves. His forehead falls into his palm.

"Honestly,” Dirk grinds out, not fully recovered from his foreword theatrics. “Can you call it a party if there aren't any ponies?"

"....I guess not. Dropped the ball again. Sorry Bro," you say, tentatively knocking your shoulder into his, and sauntering towards the roof exit.

"No problem," Dirk exhales, and you feel the brush of his stray hand against the back of your leg, almost reaching out for you, but not really. You practically flash-step to the door, not sparing the sky a second glance-- there'll be other sunrises the next day and the day after-- swinging it open for Dirk so he can file past you down the staircase to your apartment. He seems sluggish, something that you'll taunt him for later, but now, as he lumbers past you with the weariness of a much older man-- not at all similar to the triumphant carriage of the body in your memories.

You were never used to winning these battles of impatience-- more times than not you were catapulted down those dark stairs in a heap-- so you reason that Dirk is owed something of a victory. Just for old time’s sake. You hook your chin over his shoulder and whisper into his ear.

"I love you."

Dirk pauses, and you catch the anxious twitch of his brow.

"I know."

Once the door shuts out the offending daylight to the stairwells dreary walls, the both of you silently descend into lukewarm shadows. The two feet of space between your bodies thrums with the polarized attraction like two magnets thrust together. From your angle behind him, you can see the tendons of Dirk's neck, and the skeletal drop of his spine into the gap between his shoulder blades. If you wanted to, you could reach out and trace the bony bumps down to the hem of his tank top. You dig your hands into your back pockets and open your mouth instead.

"I do. I just don't need to word vomit all over myself before I admit it for the last time," you jeer, your voice echoing against the slanted brick.

  
You take approximately three more steps in the semi-darkness before Dirk rounds on you, and you stop short, catching yourself on the banister.

  
"The last time?" Dirk parses out with a curious edge in his voice.

"Yeah..." you say, suddenly unsure of your intent. You consider that Dirk has misheard you. "That I...realize it. Timelines? Vomit? You know. You implied that you knew when you Han Solo'd me a few seconds ago. Don't think I let that get past me. I've seen way more movies than you. Gotta admit, it was pret-ty slick. Props to the puppet-master,” Though he's temporarily made shorter than you by the divots of the stairs, he still intimidates you with his visible irritation. And you know all it's gonna do get you into further trouble, but you can't control the garbage falling out of your mouth.

“You’ve got all the woolly charm of a Ewok," you add as an halfhearted afterthought.

"I have no intention of letting you forget how slick it was." Dirk preens, stalking up the steps towards you. Soon he's standing on the same step as you, and you scoot away until your shoulders rub against the rank walls, with the banister probing you in the small of your back.

"A lot of folks go there entire lives without being Solo'd. I meant it. What's with the grandstanding? We already played this game," he says with sour emphasis.

"Yeah, no doubt about that." Your head bobs up and down in agreement; you are really asking for a throttling. "But if you were really, uh, committed to the cause, you would have been encased in carbonite by now. There's a canonical authenticity that you have completely sidestepped here, and it has lost you this many points with the princess," you open your arms as wide as you can reach. When Dirk shuffles closer to you, your hands jump behind you to brace yourself on the arm of the iron bar and you stutter out, "A-and you call yourself a fan."

"You would have me immobilized and blinded, as opposed to being where I am right now." Dirk's voice is laced with suspicion and sullied down to a gravelly monotone. You roll your neck, savoring the subtle cracks of stretched tendons, trying to ignore the cold sweat that trickles down your cheek.

"Erm-heh. Yeah," You manage with tight lips.

"Just out of your reach," he offers, his chin jutting out defiantly. "Practically hog-tied and waiting for you."

"What can I say?" you squeak, the raised pitch of your voice betraying a vicious tell. You swallow deeply and continue, "It's a position I've grown used to. You're just always there, being you. It'd be nice to see you strung up at a Huttese fine art exhibit downtown next to a wine bar. You know, where myself and the other enslaved masses could admire you from..." you cough when Dirk leans in, so close that you can feel his breath on your cheek, "...afar."

The back of your head clunks against the wall, and you're looking up, down, everywhere but at Dirk's twisted frown and the raised wall of synthetic glass that covers his eyes. You can smell the minty heat of his tongue running over the edge of his bottom lip and hear the wet click of gritted teeth. The fucker's hands are still lodged deep into his pockets. You suck in hot air, the sudden lack of breathing space making you feel as if you were staring off the edge of that roof again.

"Afar?" he says softly, "How far away from me do you think you can get? Down the stairs?"

Your head jerks in confirmation. You purse your lips and give an affirmative grunt.

"I've warned you about stairs, Bro."

You lose your battle, but not gracefully.

"Ow! Son of a bitch!"

Dirk hooks one foot around your ankle, and you collapse onto the step below, eyes wide and jolted out of your withdrawn reverie, cursing into the darkness. Dirk leans down, propping himself up with one elbow against the wall, and your legs unwillingly twist open to allow him to wedge himself between them. To add insult to injury, you see yourself reflected in the dark lenses of his glasses. You can’t handle the sight of yourself, twitching and debauched. You lash out with one hand, knocking his anime shades off of his face. They clatter away, a weak interval to the sound of your heaving lungs. Watching your vehement spluttering through the dark, Dirk pushes himself up onto his knees, bringing himself level to your body, his bright eyes unleashed and ready to pop like a bottle of shaken orange Crush.

"What the hell was that for, asshole!"

With a dent in his brow, his mouth drops open as if to say something, but you only hear a slight sigh. He comes closer, and your eyes adjust to the sudden lack of shadows on his face, his lily-white skin flushed with coral color-- you can tell that he will say nothing more than he has already. He looks angry, dejected, and brimming with frustration, but he wears the effects of your game like an angry child about to throw the dice to the floor. One of the straps of his tank top has slipped over the slant of his shoulder. You can’t stand to see him so unmade.

Mourning your bruising backside, you growl out in fatigue, and reach out to yank the strap back over his shoulder, to save yourself from the lewd spectacle. His eyes flash in the dark, and he catches your wrist with speedy finesse.

Eyeing the calloused fingers that pierce your skin, you watch him pin your entrapped wrist above your head. Dirk squeezes inside the gap of your legs, settling himself along your torso, and against your offended palm which hovers between your bodies, protecting your chest from sinking against his. Under your macroscopic vision, he is so much bigger, more real than you, staring you down with those dark, terracotta eyes. This is a blatant and permanent invitation, no limited-time offers, and you've all but propositioned yourself to seal the deal. You can’t wrangle up a joke and flitter away on a cloud of blissful ignorance, not like before, not when Dirk is perched just under the angle of your hips, staring intently into your sheathed eyes and waiting. You feel his grip on your forgotten, jelly-boned hand tighten ever so slightly, urging you to into some unnamed action.

This moment is your final stage. The spotlight is on, the music swells to a pause, and your audience awaits you.

Your free hand that previously had pushed Dirk away makes a curious trip down the folds of his tank top, dragging the ribbed cloth up with delicate fingers and then diving underneath to touch warm skin. Your hands are like heat seeking missiles, blindly prodding and encouraging Dirk into a surprised gasp. You drag the rough cloth away from from his belly and let the frigid air and your soft fingers dominate. He breaks out of his amorous stare as your hand sinks from the muscles of his stomach to dip into the curve of his hips. A shaky breath leaves Dirk, and he winces as he relishes your touch.

His eyes follow that hand until it dauntingly pulls away and fixes itself around his neck, forcing his line of sight to fall upon your trembling lips. You dig your hand into the back his neck, pulling him close. His lips to collide with your own in a kiss of closed mouths, dry from the shudder of air through your nostrils.

You wet those lips with a shy tongue, and to your excitement, his own pink appendage darts out to greet your own. It’s wet, and slightly sour, but reaches the very pinnacle of your expectations for this moment, escalated by your extensive game of cat and mouse. You share the flavors of toothpaste and corn chips, but the tangy aftertaste only encourages you to delve further and deeper into the other, making up for your devastating history of denial. And there is real movement, the wet cracking of lips and eager tongues, with force enough to flip the magnetic poles of the planet, to wreck the tides, and conquer gravity. You enter his mouth and know singularity at once.

Dirk's grip on you other wrist weakens and breaks away, and then his hands make better use of themselves cupped around your jaw, sharing your taste and breath. Your own arms encircle his torso, pinning his chest to yours. You are shoving yourselves together, trying to devour each other in the overcoming fit of long-repressed passion.

Dirk finally pulls away breathless, a lingering sliver of saliva hanging on his lips. You take a second to admire him, but nothing more, because now that you have fallen to the call of the greater powers of attraction, you would be ashamed to let it stop here. You nuzzle yourself into his neck and nip at supple skin. Dirks rakes his hands through your hair, pulling at the roots, dislodging your Ben Stiller glasses and abandoning them on the steps below. The happy reverberations in his throat tickle your tongue and only spur you on to claim him. You trace the length of his neck with your tongue before hitching on to a particularly soft spot and beginning to suck, as if you could breathe through Dirk’s skin like some reptilian beast.

An able groan bursts forth from Dirk, and he shifts only to brush into a sensitive member of your own. You bite down and let a moan of pleasure slip through your teeth, rocking your hips forward again in some carnal reflex, bucking Dirk into the air like a bronco. His body splays out over your own and the phantom feeling of his clothed cock against your stomach drives you wild.

Thinking with your libido, you wrap your arms around him, and roll him over onto his back, so that he is spread out on the jagged teeth of the stairs. You fall into his lap like a heavy sack of flour, and grind against him like a kid on his first bike. The motion unsettles your bodies and you slip down a step, knocking the hat right off of Dirk's head. Dirk looks comically perturbed at the sudden change in position, and a little shaken when his bare head knocks against the back of the stairs, but nothing can stop you from taking control of his mouth again, and shoving all thoughts of comfort to the wayside.

You suck viciously at his lips, and he fights along with you, biting into the sensitive flesh and lapping and sucking at your mouth. You grasp at each other as if you are falling; your grasp tight and furious because you are more and more aware of the space left between you after all this time, that needed so desperately to be cast away, exterminated like corrupt data. You can’t afford to let the distance linger, not when you are as closer to your brother than ever before.

You take this opportunity to attack the buttons of his pants with shaking fingers. Dirk exclaims in surprise, and once you have both of your cocks in your hands, he knocks his head back against the cement and curses a steady stream at you. You build up an atmosphere made of hurried, contorted thrusts and a disturbed dialogue of swears and pleas. Finally the only buffers between the two of you are sweat, cum, and a few strained but jubilant tears.

Because some people play games, whether it's for risk or pleasure, friends or fortunes, but some games can play people. It's a lesson that has beaten you into submission over the infarction of hours and minutes lived twice, ten, fifty times over, but has tricked you into only loving once, and with reckless abandon. Bigger messes have warranted your efforts until now, but they're all in the past-- and none quite compare to the infernal, indulgent chaos that Dirk drives through your tortured body, this final form that he helped bring into fruition. You have a bad habit to break, and a hackneyed heart in sore need of attention. Finally, you've lost enough control of time for you to manage both at once.


End file.
